


Perfectly Normal Night Vale

by HugeAlienPie



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Character of Color, Canon Gay Relationship, Childhood Friends, Coming Out, Growing Up Together, Multi, Night Vale is a Normal Town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Carlsberg looks at this kid, tall and scrawny and none too stable on his wobbly plastic chair, and he sees something rare in Night Vale: fire, ambition, vision. And Steve has no idea what "the Matter of Britain" is, but he needs to be part of it, needs to be part of whatever Cecil Palmer is becoming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfectly Normal Night Vale

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Counting Down the Hours](https://archiveofourown.org/works/927778) by [craicagusceol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/craicagusceol/pseuds/craicagusceol). 



On the second day of second grade, the Palmer kid, with his weird violet eyes and the floppy hair Miss Cummington keeps calling "wheaten", even though they live in the middle of the desert and most of them have only seen wheat in loaf form, stands on his chair and announces that he's going to be presenting "Scenes from the Matter of Britain" at the Night Vale Community Theater Talent Jam next month, and that anyone who wants to help should meet him the next day outside the school library.

Steve Carlsberg looks at this kid, tall and scrawny and none too stable on his wobbly plastic chair, and he sees something rare in Night Vale: fire, ambition, _vision._ And Steve has no idea what "the Matter of Britain" is, but he _needs_ to be part of it, needs to be part of whatever Cecil Palmer is becoming.

Steve is the only person who shows up at the library. Turns out "Scenes from the Matter of Britain" means that Cecil, bearing, variously, a Burger King crown, a tin-foil sword, and a cassava root that's supposed to be a wand, plays Merlin, Arthur, _and_ Lancelot, while Steve, in a blond wig and his sister's dress, probably the first Laguna Pueblo Guinevere in the history of American theater, puts his wrist on his forehead and waits to be rescued. After the talent jam, Steve's parents and Cecil's grandparents say they did a wonderful job, and how proud they are, and clearly have no idea what's happened, and Steve doesn't care.

He's made a best friend.

*

"Cecil, c'mon," Steve pants as they coast down the last hill the basketball court, "don't keep me waiting, man. Berkeley or Stanford?" Cecil is uncharacteristically silent, way more focused than he needs to be on a path they've ridden a hundred times. "Ceec?"

Cecil puts on a burst of speed, leaving Steve behind on the trail, but Steve still hears him say, quietly, "Neither."

It's a damned good thing no one's behind them, because Steve brakes so hard he almost goes over his handlebars. " ** _WHAT_**?!?"

Cecil brakes slowly. He stops at the bottom of the hill, holding his handlebars in a death grip, narrow shoulders tense beneath his thin white t-shirt. "Steve--"

"No, for real, Cecil, what the _fuck,_ seriously."

Cecil gives a tiny shrug. "It's not...I'll go to NVCC. No big deal."

"You _can't_!" Steve rolls down the hill and spins around so he's facing Cecil, fingers flexing in agitation around his handlebars. "Cecil, your scholarships. Your... _brain_. You can't settle for community college. You can't get stuck here."

"I can't _leave_! Have you seen him? He's dying." He swallows and looks away. "He's dying," he says again, a broken whisper.

Steve _has_ seen him, Cecil's grandfather, who's been going rapidly downhill since his wife died a year ago. It's a damned shame, it is. But Steve's not about to let his best friend, and the smartest person this town has ever produced, rot here because of it. "There has to be some other way--somebody else--"

"Anyone come to mind?" Cecil asks bitterly.

"It...it's been a couple years," Steve ventures. "My parents could help you try to find your mom and brother again."

"They walked out on a _five-year-old_ ," Cecil says, and his voice is steel. "The fuck I'd let them take care of a dying 75-year-old."

"I could take care of him," Steve says tentatively.

"What?" Cecil looks at him, part surprise, part incredulity, and Steve doesn't know whether to feel insulted or smug. "Steve, you can't--"

"Can and will," he says. Now that he's thinking about it, he _likes_ the idea. "It's not like I have any plans for after we graduate. Might be nice to have something to do for a while. If he's got good insurance, it'll cover home health care."

Cecil wraps the long fingers of one hand into gold-brown hair in need of a trim. "Steve, I appreciate it, seriously. The fact that you'd even offer. But you can't offer your _life_ \--"

"Cecil," he says gently, curling his hand over Cecil's where it rests on his handlebar, "it's not my life. It's...five years. Tops."

Cecil's breath hitches in his chest. Steve rushes to his side, bike clattering unheeded to the ground, and gathers him into his arms, humming one of his mother's old lullabies while Cecil shakes with tears.

Finally Cecil eases back and stares at him. "You'd do this for me? Really?"

Steve nods. "And for him. And for me, a little. Nice to have a purpose. To be useful."

Cecil taps his fingers against his chin thoughtfully. "What about Jessye?"

Steve flushes red as a hydrant. "I don't know what you mean."

Cecil swats Steve's arm. "Nuh-uh. I invited you both over for pizza rolls and a _Matrix_ marathon Friday night, but you're both mysteriously busy."

The blush deepens. Steve wouldn't've thought it was possible. "We're going out. Bowling, maybe. That new Desert Flower place? It's just a date. We're not getting married or anything."

"Yeah, no, I get it," Cecil says, but he gives Steve one of those _looks_ that reminds Steve how much more Cecil sees than anyone else in Night Vale--especially when it comes to Steve. "Still, if this is something you want to do, maybe you should talk to her about it?"

"Yeah," Steve says. He likes the way it feels, this future, the one that maybe has Jessye Masters and taking care of Cecil's grandfather in it.

Cecil smiles and slips back into his saddle. "Stanford it is, then," he says, and Steve chases his laughter all the way to the court.

*

Roland dies at the end of Cecil's junior year at Stanford. As in, Cecil gets home after finals; Roland, Cecil, Steve, and Jessye eat dinner; Cecil's in bed by 10; and Roland's dead by 3.

After the memorial, Cecil and Steve stand on the mesa where they scattered the ashes and look down on sleepy Night Vale. Cecil looks foreign and glamorous in his crisp white dress shirt with the faint purple stripes, his tight black waistcoat and thin silver tie, his wing-tipped shoes. But he looks familiar and _weary_ , too, his honey hair perpetually overlong and dark circles under his violet eyes. Steve's black suit belongs to Jessye's dad and is tight across the shoulders, but he feels more settled now, more at home in Night Vale and his own skin than Cecil's ever been.

"It was nice of Mayor Masters to speak," Steve ventures.

Cecil snorts. "You've been dating her granddaughter for five years. She really make you call her 'Mayor Masters'?"

Steve grins and blushes and looks at the ground. "Mostly I call her Ms. Josie."

Cecil hums, processing this. "She have a new exchange student? Thought I saw someone with her at the Ralph's yesterday."

"That's Erika," Steve says, nodding.

Cecil's face scrunches up. "Wasn't the last one named Erika?"

"I swear they're _all_ named Erika."

Cecil chuckles, then looks guilty at having done so. "But. Yes. It was nice of her. I forgot how close they'd been." They stand in silence a moment, then Cecil clears his throat. "Your eulogy was perfect."

Steve ducks his head lower. He knows Cecil doesn't _mind_ how close he and Roland got over the years; it was part of the point of Steve taking over the man's care. But it still has to hurt, realizing your best friend was closer to your own grandfather at the end than you were.

"I'm glad he had you with him," Cecil says softly. "You and Jessye both."

"He was a good man," Steve says, just as soft. "We were honored to know him."

Cecil nods and watches the town and then says, "I'm moving back after graduation."

Steve stares at him in abject horror. "What?"

"I've been talking to Leonard. Might be a job for me at the station."

Steve can't stop staring. He wishes he could pull his hair without messing up the braid. "Cecil, what--the whole _point_ of me taking care of your grandfather--"

"The point of that," Cecil says hollowly, "was for me to get out of Night Vale for a while." He waves his hand at some nebulous, undefined space beyond their hometown. "See the world." He shoves both hands into his trouser pockets and shakes his head. "Now I've seen it, and that's enough of that. People out there--it's not _here_ , Steve. It's this big, noisy, messy place where no one knows their neighbors and no one helps each other. Everyone's addicted to TV and movies because they're too scared to make their own stories. And _no one_ makes fry bread right." They shudder. "If you rearranged your life for mine, I want my life to be one you can be proud of."

Sometimes it _hurts_ , the weight of the regard Cecil holds him in. Steve retreats behind sarcasm, his only defense. "Shit, the way you talk. Sometimes I swear you're an alien."

Cecil laughs and bumps their shoulders together. "Sometimes I feel like one."

So it's not surprising when, five seconds later, Cecil blurts, "I'm gay," and not much more so that he says it at the same time Steve breathlessly confesses, "I'm gonna ask Jessye to marry me."

They stare at each other. A grin like sunrise breaks over Cecil's face. "Yeah?" he asks. Steve nods. "About time, asshole. Josie and I've been waiting for you to step up for a _year_."

Steve laughs. "I want to do it as soon as I finish my RN. I think I'll be ready then."

"Good for you," Cecil says. "Both of you."

"Thanks." He doesn't know how to tell Cecil his accouncement isn't that big a revelation. He doesn't know if anything happened between Cecil and Earl Harlan back in high school or if they just wanted it to, but their longing stares hadn't been subtle. He fixes Cecil with a stern look. "You tell those boys: they break your heart, they answer to me."

Cecil blushes tomato-red and hides his face behind his hand. Steve sees his grin anyway. Cecil shoves him onto the path with his other hand, and they laugh all the way back to the car.

*

Steve's known he loved girls since he was ten, and _one_ girl since he was 15. He never had so much as a single confused pubescent sex dream about a guy.

But he defies _anyone_ , regardless of sex or orientation, to look at Carlos and not feel...conflicted.

It's not that he doesn't think Cecil deserves a hot boyfriend. Cecil is brilliant and funny and kind and, if Steve can look at him objectively, pretty attractive. As far as Steve's concerned, Cecil deserves the hottest guy in the world, if that guy treats him right.

The thing is, people who look like Carlos don't _come_ to Night Vale. People who look like Carlos, with his perfect hair and perfect smile, go to Los Angeles and New York to make blockbuster films and pose for underwear ads. They don't accept fellowships in Night Vale's not-as-secret-as-it's-supposed-to-be underground government research lab so they can spend a year never seeing the sun and being forbidden to talk about what they do all day.

Only, here's Carlos, looking completely at ease against the cracked red vinyl of the Moonlite's booth, talking a mile a minute about shit Steve _really_ doesn't understand, building precarious structures out of sugar packets and creamer cups to demonstrate vast underground bacterial colonies and different ways of measuring time, looking at Cecil like he hung the whole damned solar system--a look Steve recognizes from his early days with Jessye, when he could barely believe she had actually agreed to go out with him. Steve looks around the table, at how absurdly pale Cecil looks compared to Carlos and Jessye and himself, how much less at home Cecil, a Night Vale native, seems here than Carlos, a newcomer, but how Cecil _glows_ in Carlos's presence, like he's finally at home, at least, in his own skin.

Steve doesn't think much about love, but he thinks he knows it when he sees it. He looks at Carlos and Cecil across the booth, and he likes what he sees.

*

"You're listening tonight, right?"

Steve tucks the phone more securely between his ear and shoulder and resettles Morgan against his chest. Not that Morgan cares; she can squall in any position. He sighs. "I don't know; it's awfully late. I'm off nights for the first time in a month; I want to sleep."

Cecil lets Morgan's sobbing speak for itself. "How is she?" he asks softly.

"Her fever broke, thank god, but I think she's still aching--I think that's why she keeps crying."

In the comfortable silence that follows, Steve hears the clicking of Cecil's laptop keys. In addition to his show on NVCR, he writes for four New Mexico Public Radio programs, one of which is about to go national, and has produced several radio documentaries. It's not a life Steve would ever have chosen for himself, but it makes Cecil happy. "So, listen, the show--"

"Maybe."

"I'm doing something different tonight. Like, _really_ different. I'm excited about it, but I need someone to tell me honestly if it's any good. I'm having trouble maintaining objectivity. I've been working on this for, like, 26 hours."

"Jesus Christ, Cecil." There's a tense moment while Steve switches Morgan and the phone to the opposite ears and almost fumbles them both. "When's Carlos coming home?"

"This isn't about Carlos," Cecil says tetchily. Steve turns his laugh into a cough and doesn't argue. "Everyone tells me to keep busy, so I'm _keeping busy_ , okay? I went on a 50-mile bike ride this morning. I've walked Cece seven times. I'm three scripts ahead on all my shows. And I read. Someone left a very nice Lovecraft collection at the station, and I've been... _thinking._ "

Thinking. That seldom ends well for anyone, but Steve hasn't been Cecil's best friend since second grade for nothing. If Cecil's been thinking, there's nothing for it but to leave him 'til he's thought it all out. Or until Carlos comes back from Geneva. Steve hopes that happens first. "Okay," he offers, "if Morgan's awake at midnight, we will listen to your show together."

"Steve, you are the best." Cecil sounds like he's grinning. Manically. "You've always been the best. I'm not sure I deserve you as a best friend."

"Well, I deserve you," he says. He looks down and realizes he's holding a sleeping baby. "Hey," he whispers, "the kid's dropped off. I'm going to get some sleep. You should, too."

"Eh," Cecil says dismissively. "See you later. Enjoy the show."

Steve will _not_ enjoy the show, he tells himself--and Morgan--sternly. He will be asleep at midnight.

*

Steve is awake at midnight.

He shuffles into the kitchen, grumpy and bleary-eyed, rubbing his eyes and trying not to try to remember the sorts of ancient curses he could call down upon his infant daughter if he had a mind to. It's not Morgan's fault the fever's left her aching and irritable.

He clicks on the radio as he moves around the kitchen, half-asleep and running mostly on autopilot, putting together a bottle Morgan probably won't drink. The show before Cecil's is just finishing up, creepy-as-hell organ music that makes Steve think Vincent Price is lurking in the shadows of the studio.

There's a brief silence, and then Cecil's "radio voice" fills the room. It's a little bit slower than his normal voice, a little bit fuller. And it says, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself. The monsters in your closest are quite nice and have been assigned especially to you by the City Council. Welcome to Night Vale."

Steve drops the bottle in the sink.

By the time Cecil cuts to the weather--which, for some reason, is a John Phillip Sousa march-- Morgan's been asleep on the kitchen table for almost an hour, and Steve knows sleep's not coming for him anytime soon. He leaves a note in case Jessye wakes up, carefully bundles Morgan into her little purple hoodie, and walks to the car in a daze. He knows he ought to leave Morgan at home in her crib, but he suddenly can't bear to go for even a few minutes without the presence of another human being, lacking though this particular one may be in small-talk skills.

What is this...this _thing_ Cecil's wrought? Theirs is a sleepy and all-too-knowable town, where everyone's in everyone else's business and the most interesting thing to happen on a given day is John Peters blocking traffic when his combine breaks down in the middle of Main Street. But, with a few well-placed intimations and a handful of nonsense, Cecil's turned it into a paranoiac's wonderland of government conspiracy, eldritch horror, and gateways to barely imaginable realities behind every closed door.

Steve pulls into the parking lot of the Moonlite All-Nite Diner and sits with his hands on the steering wheel, staring at the flickering neon sign and trying to make sense of his life.

The world Cecil created tonight was so alien because it was so familiar, he thinks. This isn't one of the fantasy realms or far-off planets of Cecil's other fictional work. This is Night Vale rendered completely other beneath the suddenly flimsy-seeming mask of its everyday reality. Cecil had peppered his broadcast with references to the things that made up the basic framework of every town resident--Cheryl's Little Princesses Dance Studio, Mayor Winchell, the dog park downtown that nobody asked for but the City Council's dead set on building anyway. On the drive over, Steve caught himself looking at the landmarks he's been looking at his entire life and wondering if any of them are real, are what they appear to be.

When Steve gets Morgan and himself out of the car and into the diner, Ruby doesn't say a word, just shoves a mug of coffee into his free hand and motions him toward a table in the middle of the room, where a half-dozen people hunch in uneasy camaraderie. Steve slides into an empty chair next to Josie, and she wordlessly reaches over and sweeps her great-granddaughter into her arms. Steve gulps at his scalding coffee, keeps his gaze fixed on the tabletop, and waits.

"Listeners, I have wonderful news!" Cecil's voice informs them from the speakers in the diner's ceiling. "The scientists have concluded that science has _not_ abandoned Night Vale, as they first believed." The theory that Night Vale is so strange that science itself has given up and left in a huff has been a running theme of the broadcast. Science merely does not function in the normal way here, which caused their instruments to malfunction. Now that they have recalibrated, they are already reporting fascinating findings. In Night Vale, the speed of light is 299,792,454 meters per second; the average human body temperature is 99.8, and cheese does not exist on alternate Wednesdays. I can't _wait_ to hear what else they discover!"

Steve snorts into his mug as Cecil begins the farm report, a Leslie Marmon Silko poem. As he considers that little speech, he thinks he understands why he's freaking out. If Cecil were using his usual voice, quick and slightly sarcastic, he'd be easy to laugh along with-- _wink wink, nudge nudge._ If he were over-the-top spooky, he'd be easy to laugh off. But the Cecil of this broadcast is so _earnest_ , like he's an ordinary guy reporting on the ordinary events of a town that includes blood-slicked freeways, dead-eyed messenger children, and an Arby's that serves its roast beef sandwiches with tails still attached. Absurdly, Steve looks around and thinks, **_Is_** _that what's ordinary here, and we just don't see it?_ He suspects everyone at the table is thinking something like it, too.

The broadcast draws to a close. The table is littered with coffee carafes and empty plates. Science (actual science, as though it's an actual, sentient _thing_ , or maybe just a stand-in for Carlos) declares its love for its wayward child, Night Vale, and Cecil says, "Oh, listeners, I'm so _relieved_ to hear that science still loves us. We all need love, don't we? From family and friends, spouses and partners, perhaps pets--and perhaps most of all from the immutable laws of the Cosmos. Fearing we were abandoned by that love brought me just that one step closer to the yawning void of unknowable nothingness that just behind all our eyeballs, in the place we cannot see. And learning that, after all, our lovely little town retains that love will help me sleep better tonight. Let us _all_ sleep better tonight. Good-night, Night Vale. Good-night."

A moment of empty static falls, and then the early-morning farm report kicks in. Silence reigns in the diner. Larry Leroy stands, tosses enough money on the table to cover his coffee and cinnamon strudel coffee cake, and walks out without a word. Slowly, silently, the others stand, pay, disband. They barely look at each other. They'll all be back for the next broadcast; Steve knows it. He reclaims Morgan, puts her back into her hoodie, and drives home in silence.

When he gets home, he puts Morgan in her crib and then, on a whim, wakes up the computer. Cecil, ever conscientious, has already uploaded the .mp3 of the night's broadcast. Steve emails the file to Carlos, adding, "Heard about the extension. Congratulations!" (He's not upset he heard about it from Josie, rather from Carlos or Cecil themselves. He's _not_.) "Thought you might be interested in what Cecil's getting up to while you're gone." He's not asking Carlos to turn down the extension; his work at CERN, whatever the hell it is, is obviously important and makes him happy. And Steve's happy _for_ him, knows Cecil is, too. There aren't sufficient words in any language for how proud Cecil is of Carlos. Steve just thinks Carlos should be aware that his boyfriend's developed some possibly worrisome coping mechanisms to deal with the separation.

Steve slides into bed and curls against Jessye, tighter than the night before. He clutches at the grounded, corporeal reality of her curving hips and stomach, the blessedly tentacle-free planes of her shoulders as she shifts and murmurs in her sleep. Steve closes his eyes and relaxes for the first time since the broadcast started. He's not sure what Cecil's unleashed into the airwaves around Night Vale, but sitting at that cracked diner table, Steve felt something he first felt that day in Mrs. Cummington's second grade class, that feeling that's never left him, twenty years later. Cecil Palmer is _making something happen._ He's _going somewhere_.

Steve intends to be with him all the way.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this tumblr post](http://anneisalwaysangry.tumblr.com/post/57765282338/what-if-cecil-is-just-a-regular-late-night-radio). I originally meant it to be longer, explaining how Steve-the-best-friend became Steve-the-on-air-nemesis and a lot of other things, but I reached a logical stopping point, so I...stopped.
> 
> I, uh, do the thing. With the [tumbling](http://hugealienpie.tumblr.com/%22).


End file.
